The Faculty of Law, The Hebrew University
Mount Scopus
Jerusalem 91905
Israel
- Democracy and community development
- Gender
- Human rights
- Research
- Youth and education
The Clinical Legal Education Center (CLE) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is a legal educational program that offers free legal services to marginalized population in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. The CLE Center is premised on the principle of the law as not simply a means to resolving disputes but a public ‘commodity’ that can be used for social change and made accessible and available to everyone. Our work successfully integrates community–based lawyering, legal aid and policy reform activities with high standard academic programing that yield socially-committed law students that later become legal professionals and influential stakeholders in related fields throughout Israel.
The CLE Center runs 10 legal clinics that specialize in the following fields:
1. The International Human Rights Clinics: works to promote and apply international human rights law within Israeli law.
2. The Criminal Justice Clinic: provides legal assistance, free of charge, to individuals involved in all stages of their criminal proceedings — from time of arrest through indictment, trial, appeal and retrial.
3. The Representation of Marginalized Populations Clinic: Community lawyering that provides legal aid, legal consulting and representation, free of charge, to people of the marginalized and social-economic periphery societies of Jerusalem.
4. The Community and Social Economic Clinic: offers legal assistance and guidance to small business owners and entrepreneurs in society’s disadvantaged or marginalized groups
5. The Rights of People with Disability Clinic: aims to promote the integration of people with disabilities into society by advocating policy change, particularly through the implementation of legal rights in employment and education.
6. The Innocence Project - The Wrongful Convictions Clinic: Works to provide more accessible and practical retrial opportunities by assisting convicted individuals in need of legal expertise and access to justice and due process.
7. The Children and Youth Rights Clinic: provides legal aid and knowledge regarding the law and the legal system to Israel’s children and youth through the process of empowerment and legal representation.
8. The Women’s Rights at Work Clinic: promotes and protects the rights of society’s working women in the ethnic/national/religious/socio-economic margins,
9. The Financial Market for Social Outcomes Clinic: assists entrepreneurs and investors in devising innovative models for enabling social enterprises to raise capital in a manner in which entrepreneurs can pursue their social goals
10. The Multiculturalism and Diversity Clinic: students come with various perspectives including future lawyers, psychologists, journalists, sociologists and anthropologists, are coming together to explore the loaded and intriguing intersections among the various cultural groups composing the Israeli mosaic.
The CLE Center currently serves as the largest pro bono office in Jerusalem. We have considerable experience in leveraging the law to protect the rights of diverse and marginalized populations in Jerusalem. As such, we believe we bring forth valuable experience and knowledge in promoting social and policy change by combining legal channels with advocacy work, setting legal precedents and empowering underserved populations to gain access and improved status under the law. Further, we instrumentally leverage the academic work at the Faculty of Law to cultivate the next generation of lawyers in Israel that are committed to social change and increasing access to the legal system for all members of Israeli society.
We would like to join the ALF Network in order to expand our network and potential partners aiming to increase the scope and impact of our work, share knowledge and capacity and avoid duplication of services.